Playing Goddess
by Ymirs
Summary: an inconsistently updated series of yumikuri drabbles
1. Toxicity

**summary: **in which Ymir does not believe.

I do not believe in love.

It is nothing more than a lie, a concoction thought up by the rejected and downcast, those who are desperate for any claim to happiness. If they can give this assertion a name, give this piece of make-believe shape and substance, then maybe, just maybe it can save them from the woes of their waking lives.

Yeah, right.

What a load of nonsense. In this cruel, hopeless, world, they will conjecture all sorts of imbecilic ideas to make this life bearable. They are not willing to tough it out, to face the hard facts and accept this fleeting existence for what it is. Instead, they search for a means to escape truth, seeking refuge at the bottom of liquor bottles and within the needled points of syringes; in the thrill of combat with an invulnerable enemy; in between the lips of a mistress whose name they can no longer recall.

Love is nothing but a myth, a fairy tale, the sand in the eyes of sleeping children, whisking them away to honeyed dreams of a merry tomorrow.  
And yet, when she cradles me in her arms and I breathe in the faint scent of perfumed locks of hair, radiant and gold in the shadows of our room, something within my heart stirs. I could not be taken in by a fairy tale, but her sweet whispers are raptures running down my spine, and almost forcibly they spirit me away to a place which has no right to exist. Her kiss is poison - every time her lips meet mine, I am corrupted by sensations that are not real; an awareness which hammers away at my chest like a tireless blacksmith perfecting his latest work of art. Upon her tongue is the bitter flavour of deception, the tang of a dishonest life, but the moment it meets my own there is no taste more divine. I can only speak to her in fallacies, for the truth has no place in her presence.

I do not believe in love, but dear god, if I did, it would have her face, and her hands, and her blue, blue eyes, and it would smile at me as she does in the dead of night, when the only sounds are murmured words of reassurance that our survival is not a mistake in the design of the universe, that we were destined to endure this world together.

I do not believe in love, because I do not need it.

Not while I have her.


	2. Phobia

**summary: **in which Krista gets the upper hand (if only for a few sweet seconds)

A paroxysm of giggles erupted from the blonde trainee's lips as her girlfriend's fingers crept along the exposed skin of her midriff, sliding beneath her shirt and creeping mischievously over her sides, where she was most sensitive. Her pleas for mercy died upon her lips, unable to overpower the peals of laughter which rang out instead. Escape was impossible; Ymir was straddling the smaller girl's hips, holding her captive upon the lower shelf of the bunk they shared. Krista squirmed and squealed with all her might, clawing at the roving fingers which tortured her so, but to no avail.

"Ymir…please…I can't!" she huffed between attacks, unable to speak except in broken sentences. "Break…I need…time-out…pleaaaase!"

"You can't break?" asked Ymir, tilting her head to the right in a puzzled manner. Never ceasing in her assault, she continued, "Hah? What on _earth _are you trying to say, Krista? You'll have to speak more clearly than that! How will I _ever _understand you otherwise?"

"Evil…Ymir is crueeeel!" wailed Krista. She battered the taller girl's chest with a series of half-hearted punches, and in response Ymir freed her hands from the fabric of Krista's blouse and grabbed the blonde's wrists, pinning them down over her head in one swift move. With the intention to begin assailing the girl's neck with her mouth - an action that she knew would make Krista _really _squeamish - Ymir glanced at the powder-white skin, and then quickly down beside it, past the corners of her bed sheets to the wooden floorboards below the bed.

Every muscle in her body turned to stone, and her eyes stayed riveted upon the dark blemish which rested gaily upon the floor. Krista, who had managed to regain her breath during this blessed pause between attacks, raised an eyebrow at the extreme unease presenting itself upon Ymir's face. She turned her head and craned her neck forward, following Ymir's line of vision to locate the cause of this distraction.

"Is that a cricket?" she mused aloud.

Like a current of electricity, Krista's words jolted every nerve in Ymir's body. In a flash she was half-standing, half-hunched over in the corner that the bed shared with the wall, pressing her back against the bunk's support beam.

"Eh? What's wrong, Ymir?"

"C-can you get that thing out of here?" Ymir asked, hissing her request through clenched teeth.

"What thing? The cricket?"

"Yes, the crick- NO, DON'T PICK IT UP LIKE THAT!" her voice hitched up an octave as Krista bent over the side of the mattress and scooped the twitching creature into her hands, cupping it gently in her palms.

Instinct got the better of her, and Ymir leapt off the bed in an attempt to get as far away from the insect as possible. She watched in horror as Krista opened up her hands, allowing the creature to roam freely over her palms, her fingers, her knuckles and then the back of her hand; the resultant shudder down her back had her entire body quivering.

"Are you scared of crickets?" asked Krista, her blue eyes growing wide in disbelief. As if it were also questioning the dark-haired girl, the insect offered a few cheery chirps of its own, much to her chagrin.

"I had a somewhat traumatising experience with one a long time ago," she muttered. Her jaw grew taut as the accursed cricket continued its journey along Krista's arm - why was she just _letting _the damn thing do as it pleased and crawl all over her when there was a perfectly good window right behind her? "It was rolling around in a cheap meal I'd bought from some crappy food stall. I almost took a bite out of the damn thing - I had it in my hands, and it was _twitching, _flailing those creepy little legs in the air and twisting its head this way and that _-_" She stopped speaking for a moment as another tremor ran down her spine, "Did you know that in some villages around here, they're considered omens of illness and death?" She pretended not to hear Krista's derisive snort of amusement. "My point is, I can't stand the things, so just throw it out, or I'll squish it for you!"

"But he's so _cute!_" With an impish gleam in her eye, Krista stepped forward, and Ymir responded by taking a step back. "Look at his little face - how could you hate that?"

There weren't many things in that world that were capable of making the tough soldier shake in terror, but when it came to crickets, Ymir would gladly use her friends as human shields if it meant saving herself from their despicable wrath.

"Just look at it," Krista tried again, and she picked it off her shoulder and held it out to Ymir, right before her nose.

The deafening shriek which Ymir emitted caused Krista's lips to twist into a teasing smile, and the cricket flailed its legs wildly in the air, both of them upset with the blonde's decision. "IT WAS IN MY FOOD, KRISTA! IT'S DISGUSTING! I DON'T WANT IT!"

"How'd it get there, anyway?" wondered Krista.

"How do they get _anywhere_? I don't care about the details, just take it away!"

"But I've always wanted a pet! We could keep it!" Her lips formed an 'o' as a brilliant idea popped into her head. "We could even give it a name! How about Connie? Connie the Cricket! Isn't it adorable?"

"KRISTA!"

"Hah? Are you trying to tell me something, Ymir? You'll have to speak more clearly than that! How will I _ever_ understand you otherwise?"

"_KRISTA!_"

"Alright, alright, it's going! See?" Krista daintily skipped over to the window and pushed the glass forward an inch; the resulting gap was just wide enough for the agitated insect to hop out through, but not before it aimed a series of angry, almost screech-like chirps at the two girls. "There. He's out now. Bye, Connie!"

Exhaling loudly, Ymir collapsed onto her bed and pulled her pillow over her face, burying it beneath the plush rectangle in an attempt to conceal the bright red glow of her cheeks.

Krista would have none of it; she was going to enjoy this moment while she could. "You're so cute when you're scared," she giggled, taking the opportunity to leap upon her partner's stomach. She wrenched the pillow away from the slender brown fingers which held it in place, revealing the embarrassed features of a girl who couldn't look her in the eye anymore.

"Hmph."

"I've never seen that _adorable _side of yours_._"

"That's what you said about the bug."

"Nah. You're cuter."

"Cuter than a cricket?"

"A hundred times ove- eh?"

Krista didn't know how it happened - one minute she was gloating, comfortably settled on top of Ymir, and the next thing she knew she had lost her balance; the dark-haired girl had taken advantage of her inattentive state, and had managed to roll her over and pin her down onto the mattress once again - only this time, there was no distraction to save her.

"Now," said Ymir, with a devilish twinkle shining in her eyes, "where were we?"


	3. Paperweight

When I was born, I must have come out wrong. I must have been defective. Because the look my father gave my tiny, fragile body was enough to send me into a fit of tears, and it wasn't my mother's pleading coos nor my father's sighs which got me to quiet down, but pure and utter exhaustion. I must have been born prematurely, born with a piece of myself missing, because for as long as I can remember my hands have been as empty as my words. The other children grew up, blossoming, and I grew down, far into myself, closing off from a world I had been flung into too soon. The day I became a monster, my skin became my shield.

When she was born, she must have come out wrong. She must have been defective. Because her mother was a whore with a mean streak and her father a rich man who couldn't bear the thought of a bright, blue-eyed bastard child. She must have been born on the wrong side of the world, because a girl with sunshine hair couldn't have been conceived beneath such dismal skies. But her light only radiated outwards, and her insides were cold. She carved herself a saint's cross and strung it round her neck, casting herself in a role which none wanted to see her to play. The day she left to become a soldier, her costume became her skin.

When our paths crossed, everything was wrong. If there was a single guideline, an outline of the ideal human existence, then we were the rough drafts, the balled-up and torn-apart fragments of paper which littered the skeletons of derelict houses. Yet, when her hand slipped into mine for the first time, there it was; a tell-tale sign of life, the dull flutter of a paperweight heart. Slowly, gradually, the void within her filled the space within me. Without having ever believed either of us could, we fell in love. She was a blue-eyed goddess with a black heart, I was a dark-eyed woman masquerading as a monster, and somehow, we fit together, the matching pieces in a two-part puzzle.

You know, there's an old saying that goes "two wrongs don't make a right."

Well, we made right, left, up, down, and just about everything in between.


End file.
